Assessments and examinations can be made for a variety of reasons. For example, students can take achievement tests to determine whether they have learned the required materials in school or other learning environments. These tests can be used to evaluate the student and to evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher or the learning institution itself. In addition there are other assessments, such as job interviews, psychological assessments and other tests that are encountered frequently throughout our lives.
These assessments all share a few consistent drawbacks. The first is a high degree of user anxiety. That is, the user knows that he/she is being tested which can lead to anxiety. The anxiety, in turn, can skew the results obtained from the assessment. E.g., if a particular group of students is more prone to testing anxiety, then testing of that group may indicate that the group is doing worse than the group is actually doing.
Second, users know that the results are being evaluated. This may encourage the user to respond differently that they would otherwise respond. For example, when first meeting with a counselor a person may try to provide answers to the counselor's questions that they feel the counselor wants to hear, rather than honest answers. I.e., the answers provided by the user may not accurately reflect the mindset of the user, and may instead reflect what the user thinks are the “best” answers to provide to the evaluation.
In addition, many evaluations are done on the basis of the user's answers. Often, these answers are part of a closed set. I.e., the user picks from a pre-determined set of answers provided as part of the assessment. This is often done to allow a portion of the assessment to be done automatically. That is, the user can provide answers that can be evaluated electronically, providing a final result to the assessor. However, answers from an open set of answers often allows for a better assessment. Closed answer sets provide “clues” to the desired answer. If they are not worded carefully they can reflect the assessor's biases and therefore indicate to the user the assessor's preferred answer. In contrast, an open answer set, where the user can provide any answer, is inherently free of assessor bias.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an assessment that can reduce or eliminate testing anxiety. Additionally there is a need in the art for an assessment that can reduce or eliminate user responses that attempt to match the user's belief of the assessor's preferred answers. Further, there is a need in the art for an assessment that can provide evaluation of both closed sets and open sets of answers.